Move over, chickens!

Wyoming’s industrious animal husbanders – who raise everything from cattle to pigs to yaks – will soon have yet another creature to cultivate. The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is now formulating rules for sage grouse farming.

It all began with State Senator Kit Jennings, R-Casper, who initially proposed a $50,000 pilot program for farming the birds. When that didn’t fly, he attached a tagline to a Game and Fish Department appropriations bill stating that the Game and Fish Commission should come up with rules allowing farmers to raise sage grouse for release.

"We do raise different kinds of sport animals -- we raise a lot of fish, we raise a lot of pheasants -- and I really have a hard time understanding why we can't raise a couple of sage grouse and take them out there and let some guys hunt them," he told the Casper Star-Tribune.